"Can you rest one hand on the sacred altar of Liberty...", a Free Soil cartoon of 1848

An 1848 Free Soil cartoon published under the name P. Smith, identified by the archive as N. Currier, sets Martin Van Buren and the Goddess of Liberty beside a monument to the founders, prints an extract from Daniel Washburn's Utica Convention speech, and fills the scene with speech balloons, one of which reads "Confound them nigger drivers".

The sheet

Content note: one speech balloon contains a racial slur, and the cartoon satirizes figures tied to slavery. The slur is quoted below as printed.

At the right, Martin Van Buren and the Goddess of Liberty stand by a monument that lists Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, and "Van Buren, 1837 & 1848." At the left, opposing figures, several with name labels, talk in balloons. Under the picture is a paragraph from a speech, which gives the print its title.

[balloon 1] Confound them nigger drivers- Prince John was right; They've got my soul and sent my body home by the lakes; now even Creswell cant save me.

[...]

[balloon 4] Talk about glory. Gull the doughfaces. If they resist the extension of Slavery, threaten the Union. We don't care, we must have a market for our property.

[balloon 5] Oh no, Creswell, here's the cash. Abuse Van Buren, call him a traitor.

[...]

Can you rest one hand on the sacred altar of Liberty, and with the other extend the domain of the darkest curse that a righteous heaven permits on earth? Every impulse of humanity revolts at the idea. [...]

Extract from the speech of DANIEL WASHBURN Esq. in the Utica Convention.

PUB. BY P. SMITH, 2 SPRUCE ST. N.Y.

What it does

The archive tags it for name-calling and transfer. The transfer is the monument: Van Buren's name is listed after three earlier presidents, so the Free Soil ticket borrows their standing. The name-calling runs through the balloons, and several are written for the other side, which lets the opponents convict themselves. One admits the plan is to "threaten the Union" if anyone resists slavery's extension; another hands over cash to have Van Buren called "a traitor."

Those are invented confessions, and an invented confession proves nothing. What differs is the argument underneath. Washburn's paragraph makes a real moral claim: that a free people cannot keep liberty with one hand and spread bondage with the other. That claim was right. The slur in the first balloon is part of the record too; the archive's transcription does not say which figure speaks it, and this page does not guess.

The archive dates the print 12 August 1848; a handwritten deposit line on the copy carries the same date. It notes that one figure's label may read "Propaganda," a reading it marks as uncertain, and it marks the monument's other dates as illegible.

Related on this site

Currier also published a Free Soil banner for Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams in 1848, with "Free Soil. Free Labor. Free Speech." The slavery debate case study covers abolitionist and proslavery print to 1860, and the campaign print hub places the Free Soil sheets in the run of party print.